


Francium

by DaifukuBun



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Bookstore AU, M/M, Modern AU, bonding through texting, depression and anxiety
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2017-03-15
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:43:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaifukuBun/pseuds/DaifukuBun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And so Leo surmises that perhaps he’s not here because he wants to be, but because of obligation and a weird sense of</p>
<p>
  <i>I can leave the house for an hour, just you watch.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. edge of my very own spiral

They meet for the first time under a sunset that should have been, by all means, beautiful and perfect. The massive star settles behind distant mountains in a veil of faded violet and pink, making way for the dark that’ll soon be scattered by a warning of snow. To him, though, it's not all that pretty.

Leo huffs out a breath, eyes following it as it travels to his right in a chilly fog. He watches it fade, and then he pulls his scarf upward so that it brushed against his chin. Slowly, he blinks, looking ahead once more. The door of the bookstore is still a good length away, and he begins to wonder if coming out so late for just a book signing had been worth it, after all.

It’s the cold, he thinks. It’s so cold that he just wants to go home. Normally he doesn’t mind a chill, but the fact that it’s supposed to snow within the hour does nothing to quell his shivering bones.

The next moment, a miracle occurs, and the line into the building advances about one step. Leo feels hope for a moment, before it billows away in a gust of reality. He’s still quite far, in truth, but he’s just a little on the determined side. 

What he can call determined, anyway. He had been quite literally kicked out of his home to get this book signed, his enigma of a roommate saying something about  _ I need the house to myself, for, like, an hour. _ When Leo asked why, the only response he had received was a charming and almost terrifying smile. His other roommate, after being told the same thing, had left without delay, shouting something about quenching the thirst of the shadows within himself. 

And so Leo surmises that perhaps he’s not here because he wants to be, but because of obligation and a weird sense of  _ I can leave the house for an hour, just you watch _ . This, he calls determination, perhaps to make himself feel better. Only an hour, after all. An aircraft passes overhead, and for a moment he can’t hear himself think. Then, it’s gone, and he’s back to dreading the snow. 

Another step forward, and he can sort of feel the warmth from the store. It passes in waves, and his hand clasps the book in his pocket. The bell on top of the door chimes, but he’s still outside, so he knows it’s not meant for him.

He is quite fond of the author, though. The book between his fingers feels textured like leather, even though it’s surely not made of such, and in the air he can smell coffee. The door is so close, yet so far… finally, he accepts his fate. If the snow does come, it will only be for a short while. 

Within the breadth of that same thought, an unstoppable force collides with his back, and the sound he makes after such an impact is akin to that of a popped tire.

“Hey, watch it!” a snarking voice bellows, and Leo, still hunched forward from such an ordeal, lifts one eyebrow above the other before turning around. For a split second there stands a boy with hair pulled into a flaunting ponytail, before he’s off like a bolt of lightning, and Leo’s head whips as he watches the boy run off… and into the bookstore, before everyone else. Some ornery people ahead of him complain, but Leo stands silent.

The cold is forgotten for a while, and Leo blinks, once, twice, thrice, as if he can’t believe one human could possibly harbor such lack of tact. A biting wind brings him back to reality, and he realizes that his mouth had been left open in silent protest. He shuts it, feeling quite a spark of vexation within himself. 

The sun disappears behind the mountains. Leo glares at his feet, dressed in boots fit for the season.  _ Watch it _ , he says. All he’s doing is standing around, what is there to watch? Ah, the line advances forward again… a miracle, if he knew what one looked like.

 

-

  
  


About half an hour later he’s standing in the same manner, the only difference now being that he’s indoors. Luckily the line is controlled by fabric fences and not just left to grow as it pleases, and so he doesn’t have to worry about much of a crowd.    


From the winding distance, Leo can see the table he’s here for, dressed in a white cloth and stacked a great deal with books of the same title. Despite the fact that he has to stand on his toes to peer over the person in front of him, he’s glad that he’s not outside anymore. A mixture of snow and rain taps onto the windows, and he hadn’t been affronted by any of it. 

A step forward. At this rate, he’ll be gone for much, much longer than an hour. Music plays overhead, and it lulls him into a sort of tired daze. 

“Thank you.” quips a voice. Another step forward. “Thank you.” the voice says again, and once more, a step forward. 

Leo makes a left turn, maneuvering through the line that’s a little like a zig-zag. 

“Thank you.”

He looks up, then. Three layers more of a line, but he can hear the words clearly, as if they’re being spoken directly in front of him. It seems that the people here respect the quiet of a bookstore, even if it is a rather urban one. 

Leo hasn’t a clue what her real name is, only that with her books she goes by Kamui, a pseudonym, and that she writes of a breathtakingly honest pursuit of happiness within a horrible world that doesn’t exist. He thinks that the book near his palm does feel a little ethereal, if a little dramatic. Fake leather is quite the statement, but he knows that if he were to ever write, he’d probably do the same out of fondness and pride.  _ My writing deserves this. _

“Thank you.”

He’s not sure he’d write well, though. Throughout his life he’s been encouraged to do so, but with every attempt comes a dim self-loathing that he’d rather now acknowledge. 

_ There’s no way the reader would understand something worded like that _ .  _ You’re too vain for leather. _

Of course, he’s still fond of literature, and so he reads. Overly fond, perhaps. His roommates often remark that half of their rent goes to this bookstore, but Leo knows that they don’t mean any harm by it. Between the three of them, they have enough money to go around, anyway. 

“Thank you.” a step forward. A click, and his eyes follow the sound. At first there’s only Kamui, looking like she does in her photos, wild hair swept back behind a velvet band that’s quite a bit thicker than his own. The click of her pen, as she caps it with every signature. The clicking of something else, too, and his eyes are then met with an ashen ponytail set into a red ribbon. 

“Thank you.” Kamui chirps, and her pen clicks shut. With this, the boy with the ponytail unclasps the guards of the line, letting the next person through. This, too, makes a clicking sound, although it’s a little less present.

Leo can physically feel the narrowing of his eyes. All he can see is the boy’s back, but he’s relatively sure that he had been the one to collide with his back earlier. That is, unless there’s another ash blonde somewhere in the building with hair that goes down to his waist, but for some reason Leo finds himself doubting that idea. 

“Thank you.” and he’s not far anymore, rounding the corner closest to the table. Two more clicks, and his eyes move from Kamui to the back of the boy with the ponytail. 

What’s he doing, anyway? Is it truly necessary to have someone open and close the gate each time a turn is taken? Leo thinks to himself that such an action is just as useless as the clicking of the pen between each and every signature. 

That is, until two people try to cross the line at the same time, and the boy quite literally stops them with the fabric gate. He turns, then, glaring at the offending people.

“One at a time.” he says in the same biting voice he had used outside. True to his hunch, Leo finds that it is most certainly the same boy who had run into him. For a moment Leo entertains the thought that the boy takes his job way too seriously. 

“Thank you.” Kamui says, and the boy finally lets the other person through. Leo takes a step closer, only two people between him, the gate, and the boy. 

Getting an idea, Leo shifts the book in his pocket, letting his hand out into the cold air to push his headband father back. He takes a breath, grasping the book again, before he sets about fixing his eyes upon the back of other boy, glaring as if he’s just stepped in something vile. In Leo's head, there's a hint of a smirk.

“Thank you.” a step forward, and there’s only one person standing in his way. Leo lets his eyebrows furrow as he stares at the boy’s back. 

And he’s elated when there’s a falter. The boy can feel his gaze, certainly, as for just a moment he turns his head, ponytail following the movement. Leo has to stop himself from smirking. 

Then, the final step, and he’s right next to him. Leo still stares, gaze never leaving the profile of the boy’s face. He watches as the boy stands there with his arms folded, nervous as a stranger stares at him from only an arm’s length away. The boy twitches a little, eyes flitting for mere seconds to Leo’s stare. It’s obvious that he’s trying so, so hard not to react in any way. The smirk nearly comes again, but Leo pushes it down. 

_ “What?”  _ the boy snaps at last. He regards Leo, then, eyes cold and steel and looking up a little bit. Leo finds himself staring at the space between the boy’s eyes, where his pupils seem to cross. The boy opens his mouth, prepared to bite out a remark less than polite, before there’s a click.

“Takumi?”

“Yeah?” he jumps, flinging his attention to Kamui. Leo looks toward her, too, and he sees that her eyebrows are drawn far up her head in bemusement. She doesn’t say anything, only gazes questioningly at the boy who Leo can only assume is called Takumi. 

Without a word, Takumi opens the gate with that same click. Leo looks at him, and finds him only to be looking away, deflated. A smirk makes itself known upon his face, and with this he thinks himself victorious, treading forward and toward Kamui’s table.

Petty revenge, at its finest.

Her expression hasn’t changed from how she had regarded Takumi. She’s still got her eyebrow arched high, and her mouth bent into a prim frown. 

Leo stands confused for a moment, before he blinks back to life and takes the book from his pocket, letting his smirk delve into what he hopes is an honest smile. 

“Hello.” Kamui finally says, eyes narrowing just a bit before she lets herself nod. The book is taken from his hands, and Leo feels awkward standing with a long line behind him. That pen of hers comes uncapped, and she sets about signing the inner cover of the book.

Perhaps, he’ll sell it one day. An autograph of this level is likely worth quite a lot… and it occurs to him in a sour realization that he would have never thought such a thing at a previous time in his life. No, of course he’s not going to sell it. It’s a book, and he loves it.

Leo’s eyes follow the curve of her name, before she caps the pen once more, delivering what he hopes is the final click he’ll hear today. 

“Thank you.” she says, generic and like all the others. The book is in his grasp once more, and he fumbles for a moment, realizing he hadn’t watched where the other people had gone after getting their signature. He knows he can’t just mill around the store, because obviously this is an organized event, but…

“Over there.” says a nagging voice, and he turns to see Takumi pointing in a skewed direction, toward the back of the shop. His eyes are looking anywhere but up.

A breath of acquiescence leaves him and he heads that way, pocketing the book once again. Truly, he’s not sure what he had expected, but perhaps he should have said something.

Anything, really.

 

-

 

_ “That’s really, really amazing, big brother!” _

Leo tucks the phone between his ear and his shoulder, swiveling his chair across the room to set a newly signed novel upon his bed. 

_ “I bet she was so cool! Did she look like a princess?”  _ Elise chatters through the receiver, and Leo hears a crinkling sound on the other end. 

“Like a what?” he mutters, opening the book to its front cover only to peer at the signature as if it’s an indiscernible hieroglyph. 

_ “Like a princess! You know, like the main character in the story!” _

Quiet, Leo’s lips quirk up into a small smile. “Well, no, but she didn’t look like a dragon, either.”

The crinkling sound continues through the phone, and it sounds a little grating right next to his ear. It’s over soon, though, and he hears Elise huff out a little breath.

_ “Found it!” _

“What did you find?” Leo asks, mind elsewhere. He blinks, once, twice, before letting his face get so close to the book’s pages that his nose nearly touches its ink.  _ What _ …

_ “My copy! I’m heading over there, right now!” _

“Wait, what?”

_ “You heard me!” _ she chirps, before there’s a click, and the line goes silent. So many clicks today, Leo thinks to himself, once more frowning at the ink on the page. In the back of his mind he knows that he should probably tidy the place up a bit in preparation for his little sister, but upon deciphering the signature, he finds that he’s stuck where he is, torn between dark laughter and confused muttering. 

Below an intricately crafted insignia of  _ Kamui _ lies a small, almost unnoticeable little message. Upon looking it over, though, Leo surmises that it’s… a phone number.

He settles upon a mixture of both laughter and muttering, sitting with his mouth drawn open for a moment before he whispers  _ what the hell  _ to himself and dissolves into a flurry of tired laughter.

 

-

 

_ What the hell _ .

“And so I said to Effie, no, eating a bicycle won’t make you run any faster!”

Leo has the heart to chuckle. 

“Right? If anything, it’d just slow her down even more. She’s so strong, but her speed is  _ the worst _ . Worse than mine!” Elise says, putting her hands on her hips as they walk through the light snow. Leo’s hands rest in his pockets, and he sniffs the biting air, looking ahead. They had just left the bookstore, and now are aimlessly wandering.

“But you’re fast.” he says.

“Yeah… yeah, you know what I mean. I’m not fast like she needs to be. I’m not  _ strong _ fast, I’m  _ little  _ fast.”

There’s a burning voice in the back of Leo’s head telling him to look at the book in his pocket again, to just… to just gape at the message left for him. Yet, there’s also a voice telling him to throw the novel into the street and whistle as it’s mauled by a bus. 

“Anyway, she totally looked like a princess. Kamui, I mean.” Elise continues, flicking through her own copy of the book. “I don’t know how you can’t see it. Can I see yours? Your copy?”

Leo trips over an invisible pebble, making a sound with far too much resemblance to a squawk. It occurs to him only now that he can never show this signature to anyone,  _not ever._ He's not entirely sure why, and chalks it up to the fact that it'd be too much of a hassle.

“Whoa, are you okay?” Elise pauses, grabbing him by the shoulder. Her eyes peer up into his, and Leo allows himself a grimace.

“Fine.” he bites out, not meaning it to sound as harsh as it had. “Do you want some ice cream?”

Elise blinks lavender eyes, a snowflake making its home atop her fringe. She stares at him for a while, before letting loose a brilliant grin. 

 

-

 

In his head, Leo weighs the pros and cons of selling the novel in his pocket. His eyes bore into the grain of the table and he chews on a red plastic spoon, idle as the ice cream before him melts. It’s surely worth a lot, what with the probable phone number of a famous author scrawled within its front cover. Never mind that it’s a book and he has a rule with himself to never sell his books. But then, he realizes that selling the novel in which the likely phone number of a famous author that was  _ probably for some reason meant for him _ would be terrible beyond repair. That would be like throwing an ill grandmother's Christmas present into the trash, or something equally as heinous. 

“They always tell you not to eat cookie dough.” he hears Elise say in the background, closer than the chatter of the rest of the shop. The book in his pocket is dragging him down into his own personal hell. “But then they go and put it in ice cream. Is it weird that I think there’s something fishy about that?”

“Normally when it’s in ice cream there isn’t any egg in it.” Leo hears himself say. He takes the spoon from his mouth, dipping it into a pile of cold strawberry. 

Elise looks at him, then, blinking perpetually wide eyes and shifting in her seat. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Then why do they put egg in it in the first place?”

A bite of strawberry. 

“It’s for baking.” the words roll off his tongue. “If the dough is meant to be baked it needs egg to hold it together. If it’s meant to be eaten as dough, then it’s safer to just discard the egg.”

His sister nods, twintails bouncing with the motion. “Oh, I get it.”

Leo keeps the spoon in his mouth again, his eyes pensively tracing over imaginary designs on the table. He rests his head on his palm, flicking the plastic up and down with his lips, and never looking up. Then, his distraction is ripped away quite abruptly.

Elise holds his spoon in her hand, and he’s left with a partially open mouth and an utterly offended scowl upon his face. His sister locks gazes with him, and he tries to look his most vexed, even though she appears completely indifferent to the accusatory gaze. 

“What’s wrong, big brother?” she says, tilting her head to the side as if she were a puppy. 

Leo shuts his mouth, sniffing in the cold air. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what I mean. You’re acting weird.” she smiles, then, gentle, her eyes melting a little. “Weirder than usual.”

“What does that mean?” he mutters.

“I’m just asking you what’s wrong.” Elise says, her smile shrinking, but not losing its glimmer. “I know how you can get.”

“How do I get?”

She sighs, then, a small  _ phew  _ of a sound. Leo raises one eyebrow, feeling odd under such speculation. How does he get, exactly? He watches as his sister’s eyes shut, as she pops a spoonful of vanilla, chocolate, and cookie dough into her mouth. 

“Your shirt is inside-out.”

_ “Wh-” _

 

-

 

Leo makes sure that Elise is safely on the train home before he allows himself to breathe. He sags, quite literally, into himself, hands falling atop his knees. His eyes follow the train as it veers away, and he stands once more, sighing a sigh that’s visible in the cold. 

The sun is no more and the city lights twinkle a short walk away from the remote station. With nothing more worthwhile to do, he begins the trek toward them and toward home, wondering whether Niles is awake or whether Odin is back from wherever he had gone. If either of which is the case, he knows he’ll be in for more entertainment than he feels like dealing with. 

 

-

 

Luckily, Odin is elsewhere and Niles is still out like a rock, so Leo doesn’t worry about words at the door. He merely toes back to his room, discarding his shoes and peeling off his coat, feeling much more presentable now that his shirt is in order. The flavor of strawberry still hints at his tongue, and he sighs, flopping into his desk chair.

He takes a moment to stare at the ceiling, before shutting his eyes. The heating system whirrs to life a moment later, and he sees the white of the ceiling again. 

It smells stuffy. Even in the summer he never opens a window, and Odin is left to do all the work in that regard. Leo doesn’t mind, though. The scent, that is. It reminds him of growing up in library after library, his sisters or his brother coming to open the window when he can’t be bothered to look up from his book.

Then it occurs to him that he hasn’t read anything new in a while. Nothing has really caught his interest, he reasons, that or he hasn’t been looking. He’s been distracted. By what, he doesn’t know, but he’s sure he’ll find what it is eventually. 

There’s a buzz, and he turns his attention to it, blinking as the screen of his phone comes to life. Leo wheels his chair the short distance, retrieving it from a side table and leaning back in the chair.

_ Thanks for the ice cream!! _

Leo peers at the screen, smiling a little, before tapping to reply.

_ It’s no problem _ . he types, sending the message soon after. The application is closed, and his eyes fall upon the default background of his phone. He hadn’t bothered to change it, really, as he hadn’t thought of anything that would be fitting. 

A sigh, then. He gazes at the bright image of a sunflower, before he stands, padding across the room. The book in his coat pocket is still heavy and dragging, but he pulls it out regardless, flicking through it by the door before heading back to his seat. 

In one hand there’s the book, and in the other there’s his phone. Again, he sighs, because he doesn’t really know how else to react. Leo waits a moment, before he opens the book to its front cover, and even with such a simple action, he gets the urge to wince.

An outward breath, but there have been too many sighs. He considers for a moment ignoring the phone number altogether, but knows that he’d only feel guilty later if he does. There had been a reason, after all. Perhaps it was a corporate survey, or a publishing company, or  _ something _ . He’s certainly never heard of an autograph coming with a phone number before, though, and so he, like a mantra, argues with himself.

There was a reason, there was a reason, of course there was a reason. It’s unusual, and so there was a reason, and it would be bad of him to ignore that reason.

_ Who is this?  _ he types, before sending the message.


	2. i'm upset by a world of niceties

_ “This tastes of bile!” _

Blearily, Leo swallows a lump of caged air. He scrunches his nose for a moment, before pulling the duvet off of his face and gazing at a morning ceiling. His eyebrows furrow, and he can’t help but wonder how long it will take before he and his two roommates are kicked out by the landlord. 

“Thanks, Odin.” he hears Niles say through the door, short and quipped, but still somehow sarcastic. 

“You are not welcome.”

Leo wonders about going back to sleep for a while, but the smell of burning stops him from doing so. He should probably get up and investigate.

A bird caws outside, and the sound is rather dull through his window. 

It’s too early for this. He can tell, from the slats of light across the wall streaming in through the windowblinds. That only happens when it’s too early. It means the sun is still near the horizon and not above his head in midday, like it should be. 

A clatter, then. The sound of cookware being dropped haphazardly into the sink. Leo stretches his back, yawning, before he settles down again, eyebrows furrowed at the bright white ceiling. Yes, far too early. He thinks to himself that Niles has probably been awake for a long time now, while Odin is a mystery. 

True in many aspects, Odin is a mystery.

“Leo!” assaults his ears in a fevered shout, and his door is burst open, jostling the wall and possibly the entire building.

_ “Auugh.” _

“You must see this!” Odin cries, and Leo doesn’t even bother to look at him, instead pulling the duvet over his face once more. 

“It’s really not all that exciting.” Niles calls from the other room. 

“Niles has  _ blackened every egg in this household!” _

“They’re only crisp.”

The only thing before Leo’s eyes is pitch dark, and it occurs to him that such loud clamor and stark scenery do not go well together. He peeks out from under the covers, making sure to look displeased.

“They are  _ not--  _ oh, you’re awake.”

“Did you barge in here thinking I was asleep?” he mutters, incredulous, eyes crinkling shut in the onslaught of sun as Odin draws up the windowblinds. Leo blinks at the light, affronted. “And who said you could do that?” 

The blond doesn’t reply, only looks out the window for a moment before padding over to the foot of Leo’s bed. There’s stone in Odin’s face, and a cold flurry has just the time to make itself known in Leo’s gut before the duvet is pulled astray, soaring across the room. Odin watches it sail through the air with what appears to be pride, and almost immediately, Leo feels every hair on his body stand up from the abrupt winter air.

“I  _ hate you!”  _ he cries, curling in on himself. Odin laughs a boisterous laugh, not meaning harm, but certainly causing it. In the other room, the tell-tale screech of a moving chair makes itself known. 

“You’ve been sleeping through your alarms all morning.” calls the voice of Niles, and, not realizing they had been squeezed shut, Leo opens his eyes in sudden clarity. “Don’t you have that job interview today?”

Looking up he finds Odin to be smiling in a way that’s not so irritating, and he huffs. Unfurling himself, Leo reaches for the duvet, placing it in a heap on his bed. Right, the interview. He stands upon two feet and vaguely hears Niles say something about how cute his striped socks are before he shuts himself in the bathroom. 

 

-

 

“Can you tell me about yourself?”

In his pocket, Leo’s phone is going absolutely nuts. He summons what is probably a very crooked, closed-mouth smile and tries to ignore the fact that either one of his roommates is incessantly butt-dialing him, or that Elise is trying to get ahold of him to ask about some weird weather phenomenon. In his head, all he can do is pray that his probably-future-boss can’t hear the vibrating, and put enough energy in his voice to talk over the sound. 

“I love books,” he starts, too loud, and clears his throat. Briefly he imagines himself yelling the words into the man’s ear (because that’s basically what just happened) and steadily starts to hate himself even more. 

Without much reaction, the man nods, and Leo swallows a lump of nauseous air. “I mean, I love literature.” he can hear a faint buzzing from his thigh. “At home I’m surrounded by it, and I’d love nothing more than to work with it.”

The man jots something down on a notepad and Leo has the sense to look away, even though he wonders what on  _ Earth  _ could be important enough to write down, just from his previous statement. Leo sorts through his head to find the next part of his canned speech, and while he does so he glances at the man’s hair. 

Never did he imagine that he’d be interviewed by someone with  _ green hair _ , but he chalks it up to the fact that wild shades of hair have been a fashion statement lately… sort of. 

“Perfect.” the man wears a quaint smile. “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”

Leo’s thought process sort of pauses, and he peers at the light wood of the desk before him. 

_ Strengths: I like books. _

_ Weaknesses: An insurmountable amount of other things. _

He swallows, quirking up the side of his smile in a way he hopes is confident. For a brief moment his phone had stopped buzzing, but soon it had started up again, and he had been forced to speak. 

“I think I’m very docile and good with people.” he lies through his teeth, crossing his legs so that the buzzing won’t jostle into the wooden chair and create a clamor. Never mind the fact that Leo is literally the opposite of how he just described himself, he goes on. “As for a weakness, I would say that I need to get out of my shell, which is partly why I’m interested in this job.”

Perfect. Perfect, and not necessarily a lie. In his head he does kind of a fist-pump, then winces immediately after the thought, promising himself to  _ never  _ think something like that again. 

The green-haired man nods once more, and jots down another line.

 

-

 

After the interview Leo decides to partake in a croissant, because he hadn’t opted for any of Niles’ charred eggs that morning. He sits with a sigh, practically dropping the pastry onto the glass table, lowering his head and resisting the urge to rub at his eyes. 

The bookstore is partially divided into a coffee shop and he can’t say he’s really surprised, nor does he mind the wafting smell. 

At this point in time, Leo considers himself the king of lying throughout job interviews. Most of what he’d said had been true, sure, but when asked about  _ why he quit his previous job,  _ something in him had locked up and he had said, quite standoffishly,  _ it didn’t feel quite right _ . 

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem. Until he realizes that he’s never actually had a previous job. He kind of wants to put his head down on the table, but doesn’t want to attract any concern. 

A waitress brings him his drink seconds later, and at long last he pulls his phone from his pocket, already eyeing the bright screen with distaste. He supposes that right now, he’d eye anything with distaste, which is why when he opens a message that reads nothing but  _ ‘????’,  _ all he can do is scoff. Aloud.

In a flash he checks to see that no one had looked at him, and blinks tiredly as he sets about reading a wall of text messages. 

_ How did you get this number? [12:06 PM] _

_ Hello? [12:30 PM] _

_ Hgjgjk [12:30 PM] _

_ Sorry that was my pocket [12:31 PM] _

_ Jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj [12:43 PM] _

_ Sorry I fell asleep on my phone [12:44 PM] _

Leo quirks a brow and squints at the screen, as if such an action would make them appear less strange. They stay odd, though, and so he takes a sip of the tea-like concoction he had ordered.

_ ‘You’re still sleeping at this hour?’  _ he types, poking the croissant to see if it’s cool yet. It’s not hot to the point of being inedible, he surmises, and so he bites off the corner and sends the message. With a quipped thought, he sends another.  _ ‘And who is this?’  _

The croissant has chocolate cream in the center, and he finds the cream to be a bit hotter than the crust. Puffing in some cool air, he takes a sip of his tea before remembering that it, too, is hot. With an inward grimace, his eyes glance at his phone to find it lit up. 

_ First I need to know how you got this number. [12:50 PM] _

Maybe tea is numbing, Leo thinks, that or he won’t be able to taste anything for the next few days, thanks to the scalding chocolate. It doesn’t bother him much, though, since the place smells pleasant enough to make up for it. 

He’s not entirely sure how to answer that, so in the end, he tells a vague truth. 

_ ‘A stranger gave it to me.’ _

The chocolate isn’t quite as hot, now, and so he bites into the croissant without hesitation. It’s sweet as far as he can tell, but he wishes that he could taste it better. 

_ Okay, then who is this? [12:51] _

Leo bites down on his straw. The blender has started behind the counter, and so for the moment the chatter doesn’t bother him. 

_ ‘I asked first.’ _

After he hits send, he sort of regrets it, because he knows how childish it had sounded. Still, it was true, and it had been impolite of the other person to just brush him off like that. 

It’s not surprising that he doesn’t receive a reply, and so without much thought he grabs the remnants of his drink, and sets about heading home. Maybe Niles and Odin will be out again, and he’ll have the place to himself. That, or Odin is out, and the place will be relatively quiet. While Niles oversteps his boundaries around many, he’s never been one to tread over Leo’s quiet time. 

 

-

 

“That is most strange!” Odin exclaims from the kitchen. Leo curls his legs underneath himself and leans on the arm of the sofa. Glasses clatter, and he hears a dribble turn into a waterspout, before realizing that his roommate had turned on the sink and is probably  _ still  _ washing dishes from that morning. He decides not to question it. 

Quiet time had been cancelled, and instead he had been hit with an onslaught of Odin-time. 

Nothing else is said, and so Leo works up the nerve to push the subject.

“It really is strange.” he says to the empty room, but he knows that Odin can hear him in the kitchen. “I’m wondering if she gave everyone this poor person’s number.”

The sink turns off, and the clinking intensifies. In the end he’s sort of glad that Niles is out, because knowing him, he’d find some way to make the conversation uncomfortable. 

“You’re sure it’s not her, herself?”

“Judging by their confusion I’d say not.” he says, then realizes his voice had gone quiet. He worries whether Odin had heard him, and is sort of relieved to hear him let out a thoughtful hum. 

“I would not worry.” Odin says, and Leo hears a cabinet shut. The shuffling of footsteps, and Odin appears in the archway of the living room. “In your eyes I see a most foreboding cloud of concern. You can’t let a vermin so small sap your resources.” 

“It’s not that I’m  _ bothered  _ by it.” he says, and with that Odin steps farther into the room. 

“Oh? Then why does your downward face betray your dismissive claims?”

Over the years, Leo supposes that he’s become rather fluent in the art of Odin-speak. In the beginning, even  _ he  _ had required a dictionary and an extensive knowledge of medieval fantasy lore. Which is why, at such a question, all he does is snort. 

_ That’s just my face,  _ he thinks, well aware that he, more or less, looks constantly pissed off. He lends Odin a wry smile, and shrugs. “I’m telling the truth. It’s not bothering me. I just think it’s odd, that’s all.” 

At that, Odin seems to deflate, before he turns on the tv with his  _ foot _ . Leo marvels at the stunt for a while, before his attention is stolen by the screen. 

 

-

 

_ <3 [1:26 AM] _

In the dark, Leo peers at the painfully bright screen, trying to decipher what the hell he just received.  _ Less than three.  _ He rubs at his eyes, sighing in the chilled air and actually expending the effort to sit up.  _ Less than three what?  _ He checks the time, and finds it, indeed, to be before 3 AM. Is that what it had meant?

Shaking the haze out of his head, he types  _ ‘What?’,  _ before flopping onto his back once more. 

 

-

 

_ Sorry. My sister stole my phone. [2:08 PM] _

Leo scratches his nose with one finger, yawning away the sleep. Lately, it seems that sleeping monopolizes all of his free time. 

_ ‘A kid sister?’  _ he types, sending the message and putting the phone on the arm of the couch. Elise has stolen his phone more times than he can count. 

He’s lying on his stomach, book pressed to his nose as he tries not to give in to, not actual sleepiness, but the  _ urge  _ to go back to sleep. The heating system hums to life and the walls creak just a bit. His phone vibrates.

_ No, older sister. [2:09 PM] _

At this he sort of laughs, an inward chuckle. He pictures a fully-grown adult, being teased endlessly, playfully, by their older sister. It reminds him of himself and Camilla. Then, in a beat, it occurs to him that perhaps this person  _ isn’t  _ an adult, and Kamui, the esteemed author, had been distributing the phone number of a small child. He laughs, then, a real laugh, because honestly,  _ what the hell is going on.  _

_ ‘How much older?’ _

It takes a while for the next reply, and in that time Leo successfully dog-ears most of the book’s pages with only his nose. 

_ She’s twenty-one. [2:43 PM] _

After his previous epiphany, and through his sleep, he can’t help but ask. 

_ ‘And you?’ _

At this, the reply comes almost instantly. 

_ You’re pretty keen on asking questions, aren’t you. [2:43 PM] _

Leo huffs a bit, smelling an air of old pages. Old pages, which are now crinkled. Despite this, he puts his face into the book again, sighing in that sickly sweet air. At this point, it’s no use. They’ll ask Leo about his identity in turn, certainly, if he had learned anything from their previous conversation. 

Whoever they are, they’re quite stubborn, and with that thought he puts the book on the coffee table, shutting his eyes into the cushions. 

He gives himself the excuse that he’s sleeping so much since tomorrow is his first day of work (he had received the call earlier that day), and that he’s, in a way, doing nothing more than mentally preparing himself. 

That, at least, washes away enough of the guilt that he can shut his eyes peacefully, and he can think about nice things as he goes to sleep. Nice things, like Niles turning eggs into charcoal. Nice things, like Odin dressed in full, frumpy armor. Most of the time he knows he’s lucky, but it’s when he convinces himself that he’s not, he remembers to think about the nice things. 

His phone vibrates. 

_ I’m nineteen. [3:01 PM] _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. I'm a multi-fandom, multi-fic person, and sometimes it's hard.  
> In other news, I'm eighteen years old and have no idea how a job interview works. God damn it. 
> 
> Oh, and as a side note, this fic /may/ feature side Corrin/Kaze. And by may, I mean MAY. Just, if it ever comes up in any situation and I happen to write it, it'll be... there. But if you don't ship it honestly I wouldn't even worry about it, since it'll be a vague cameo at best. 
> 
> *leo voice* i loV E BOO K S


	3. i hate you like an addict hates their fix

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small warning for alcohol use in this chapter, though it's not negative by any means. :)

“And this is your uniform!” says the girl, standing straight and confident despite her height. She smiles, then, a kind of lopsided smile that fits her round face perfectly. 

Leo takes his ‘uniform’ from the girl’s hands and stares down at it, confusion evident in his face. 

“Yeah, you can wear whatever you want.” the girl chirps. “You just have to display that ID card. It’s your uniform.”

A tiny picture of himself stares back up at him. He had tried to smile in the photo, but evidently he had failed, as he looks like he’s just smelled something foul. “... Thank you.” he says, looking up. The girl whips a hand to her forehead and salutes him, and he’s not sure whether she means it ironically or not. 

“It’s my job, no need to thank me.” she says. “You can call me Oboro, though I’ll mostly be in the back warehouse doing inventory. The cashier people are nice too, I don’t know why he- the guy who’s on duty right now- asked me to give you this, honestly, but whatever.”

Leo nods minutely, trying his best to follow along. From a lack of anything else to do he peers back at the laminated card in his hands, trying his best not to unleash a displeased frown. 

“So, your first day is next Wednesday. I look forward to working with you.”

For the umpteenth time he nods. The girl passes him another nice smile, before she turns and leaves, her long, navy ponytail swaying with every step. 

If nothing else, every employee he’s met so far seems quite nice, and so he lets a sprout of hope nurture itself inside his chest. 

 

-

 

_ I’m going to die. [3:36 PM] _

Leo holds one eye open, the other shut tight against his pillow. His windowblinds keep any light from filtering into the bedroom, and for just a moment he’s exceedingly grateful to be home alone, so that he’s free to stew around like this. As such, in this relaxed state, he can only bring himself to feel a small amount of concern. 

Nothing can hurt him here. 

_ ‘Whatever it is, I’m sure you’ll be fine.’  _ he sends back, dropping his phone atop his covers, then, and shutting both of his eyes. 

As long as this place exists, this solitude, he’ll be alright. And as such, so too will the people he cares about. He tells himself this, because he can’t handle thinking otherwise. 

Within a matter of days, he and the person on the other side of his phone become relatively friendly. They exchange small talk every now and then, just recording the happenings they come across in life with another human being, for lack of better to do. It doesn’t really matter; it’s just a mishap and a person he’ll part ways with, soon, but he’s found that he likes talking about the weather with someone who’s not turned away by his constant scowl. Someone who’s never seen his scowl, anyway. Though, maybe the people who leave at the sight of his scowl aren't worth the while, anyway.

_ This one asshole I met the other day got hired at work. I’m really going to die. It’s bad enough with the people already there. And he’ll be running the register, too. We even have similar shifts next week. I’m dead. [3:38 PM] _

He supposes, in his small universe of nothing but his siblings and his roommates, it’s a given that he’d care about this person a little bit, too. The situation is reminiscent of a person dying of thirst in the desert settling for muddy water, he thinks. 

Which, consequently, is what had caused him to get a job in the first place. The small handful of people in his universe had worried for him, far too much in his opinion. Still, he cares about them, and so he had applied for jobs less for himself and more for them, so that they could stop thinking of his wellbeing and go about maintaining theirs. 

And because of all this, he kind of wants to have a stern word or two with this  _ asshole who just got hired,  _ this asshole who has the gall to meddle in his somewhat-friend’s happiness. 

In short, he’s realized just how protective he can be. Still, he tries to quell the feeling.

_ ‘I’m sure it won’t be so bad, especially in a work environment. If they bother you, you can always report them to the manager.’  _ he says, sending it a moment later and rolling onto his back. 

The ceiling offers no nonsense pictures in the dark. 

_ ‘And, I’ll ruin their life, personally.’  _ he types, staring at it for just a second too long, before sending it, too. 

Leo hopes that the person on the other end of the line doesn't mind two messages at once.

 

-

 

_ Today, the wind was blowing so hard it made me eat a few pieces of my own hair. [10:06 AM] _

Leo smiles at the message, amused. His attention is immediately stolen from his phone soon after, though, and he shoves it in his pocket. 

“Brother, this wind is  _ despicable.”  _ Xander complains, combing his fingers through his hair at every possible interval. Leo watches his older brother fret over his hair in wonder. 

“It’s alright.” he offers. “We’ll be where we’re going soon.”

“Good. I don’t know how you can stand living in a windy city like this one…” 

At that, Leo rolls his eyes, lifting and running his hand over the button that signals they need to cross the street. It beeps with the motion, and finally Xander settles on holding his hair down with both of his hands, appearing as though he’s covering his ears. 

Personally, Leo doesn’t see any problem with the weather, though that’s probably due to the fact that he didn’t inherit their father’s wavy, difficult hair. Rather, he got the blandness of his mother’s. Not that he minds, of course. It’s easy to take care of in the morning. 

“I hope you don’t mind if I do some shopping.” Xander says when the alarm sounds for them to cross the street. Leo shrugs his shoulders, though his brother more than likely can’t see it through the curtain of his hair. 

“That’s fine.” 

 

-

 

_ ‘It’s windy where I am, too.’  _ Leo types and sends, quite bored of standing near his tactics-smitten brother. He looks up only to see said brother frowning his signature stern frown, one hand curled to his chin and the other holding a rather heavy war strategy volume open. Really, Xander may as well be a statue in an art museum. He totally looks like he could have been an ancient philosopher, or something similar. 

Elevator music plays throughout the store, and Leo thinks to himself that he should definitely allow himself to get used to it. He’s going to be hearing it nearly every day, from now on. 

_ “Fbwwarg!” _

Leo starts, his gaze darting upward. His eyes follow the sound and he finds some guy at the end of the aisle, standing straight, still, like a pole, and shaking with the most disgusted look on his face. Xander regards the guy with a minuscule pinch of concern, before he turns his eyes back to the book in his hand. Leo is left alone to quirk one eyebrow at the stranger in his sight. 

“It’s  _ you.”  _ the guy says, or rather, seethes. Xander turns a page. Leo furrows his eyebrows, and, hesitant, brings up his hand to point at himself in kind of a gesture that can still be taken back, in case the guy isn’t really talking to him, but instead the nothingness behind him. 

The guy-  _ boy,  _ he has an immensely boyish face, only increases the ferocity of his glare. 

And then it hits Leo. 

_ “You!”  _ he parrots, a little less scathing and a little more amused. He glares and smirks at the same time, pocketing one hand and- well, trying to sneer. Xander turns another page. 

It’s the boy from the book signing, the one who had crashed into his back and yelled at him for it. The one who had taken his job way too seriously, and squawked in the line of Leo’s disapproving glare. 

At last, Xander looks up. “You dropped what you were carrying.” he says, poised, and nodding down to the floor. The boy with the ponytail flinches and looks down, only to find that he indeed had dropped an impressive pile of books. 

_ “Damn it.”  _ he growls to himself, before bending down and putting all the books in his arms at lightning speed. He has to blow his bangs away from his eyes several hurried times while doing so, and once he stands again, he gives Leo one last grimace and literally  _ runs  _ away. 

There’s a beat of silence, and under the guise of a crazy coincidence, the song overhead ends and another one begins. 

“Brother, who was-- well, you don’t look happy.”

Leo snaps out of his bitter reverie, leveling his brother with a kind of innocent gaze.

“No, I’m alright.” he tries. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

Xander nods, and Leo smiles a crooked smile. “That’s good. Then, we’ll pay and go for the train.”

He goes ahead toward the register, and after a few extra seconds he hears Xander follow after him. Leo glares at the floor, pursing his lips. 

_ You,  _ he had seethed, like a petulant child. That’s what he feels like. A child. 

 

-

 

“Happy  _ Leo-Got-Hired  _ Day!” is the chorus assaulting his ears upon his return home. Leo freezes in the doorway, his coat already perched over one arm, ready to be put away. Odin pulls the string of a party-popper, sending confetti flying everywhere. Leo’s coat slips off his arm and onto the floor.

_ “What.”  _ he blurts. Niles takes a sip from an overly elegant glass of wine, winking in his direction. 

“We thought we’d throw a celebration for the miraculous occasion.”

_ “Miraculous--”  _ Leo starts, but is interrupted by Odin’s shouting. 

“Yes! We are blessed with this occasion and have thought to throw forth a, hm,  _ party.”  _

“We even bought refreshments.” Niles continues, and in the hand that’s not holding a wine glass, he jostles a  _ large hand-made banner  _ that Leo is only just noticing now. 

Wholly, the thing reads just as the two had said earlier,  _ Happy Leo-Got-Hired Day.  _ However, what he finds particularly outlandish is the fact that the first half of the banner is written in a curly, almost feminine script, while the second half appears to be done in medieval calligraphy. 

Leo loves him roommates. He really, truly does. They’re great, and they’re always there for him. He can’t remember a time when the three of them weren’t friends. But now, staring a banner and,  _ oh my god is that a cake,  _ in the face, he concludes that sometimes his roommates are just  _ too much.  _

Niles is the first to let go of the banner, letting his side fall to the ground with a graceful crinkle. “Close the door, you’re inviting a draft.” he says chastisingly, before winding around Leo and shutting the door himself. Odin sets about rolling the banner up in his hands, and Niles, ever-present with overwhelming physicality, puts his arm around Leo, kicking his coat further into the apartment and leading the blond into the kitchen where there waits, yes, a cake. One of red velvet, to be exact, next to  _ five bottles of wine.  _

Regaining a slight bit of his head, Leo narrows his eyes. “Did you get all this for me or for  _ you?”  _

Niles replies with a laugh. “We couldn’t really bake an edible tomato cake.”

“Though we tried!” Odin calls from the living room. He appears seconds later in the kitchen, a condescending (the Odin kind of condescending) grin splitting his face. “Ketchup does not bode well in the battle of baking.” he concludes. 

 

-

 

Whenever Leo lets himself drink, and he scarcely ever does, he doesn’t really feel any of the fun feelings that supposedly come with it. He just finds that he can’t talk quite as precisely as he usually does. That, and he gets a wicked stomachache. 

Odin, on the other hand, turns into a self-deprecating, sluggish wet blanket. “Nothing  _ matters.”  _ he wails, as if to prove Leo’s point.

Finally, there’s Niles, who just acts like Niles, only about ten times worse. 

Really, Leo isn’t sure why they  _ ever  _ drink, and in the end he surmises that it must have been Niles’ idea. 

“I’m so  _ creepy.”  _ Odin admonishes to himself, and Niles, draped over his shoulders like an affectionate sloth, kind of groans in irritation. 

“No, you’re  _ beautiful.”  _ he croons. Leo tries to focus and rid himself of double vision, squinting at the bright, bright light of his phone. “You both are!” Niles starts again. “You’re both  _ really fucking sexy.” _

“Sexy creeps are the  _ worst kind of creeps.”  _ Odin mutters, and Leo tunes them out once he hears another dismissive whine from Niles. 

_ ‘my roommates threw a damn party because i got a job’  _ Leo sends to the mystery person on the other end of the line, kind of collapsing and lying on the carpet, glaring with one eye when the screen of his phone rotates to be horizontal.  _ No. I’m sideways, not you. Stupid thing…  _

“Let’s play spin the bottle!”

“No, Niles.” Leo replies automatically from his carpet bed. 

“Who would want to kiss  _ me?”  _ Odin cries, throwing his arms into the air. “I’m a creepy-creepy creeptastic creep-o!”

“No Odin, you’re a  _ Sexy-o.”  _ Niles says. He then seems to take a moment to comprehend what he had just said, before snorting and bursting out laughing, falling face first onto the floor. “ _ Holy shit _ , I slay me.” 

_ It’s three in the morning, and don’t you start tomorrow? [3:12 AM] _

Leo squints his other eye at the phone. He can’t seem to get both of his eyes to do the same thing. How frustrating. 

_ ‘Shit’  _ is all he bothers to send this time, before he looks back at his two best friends in the world, one of them sobbing and curled into the fetal position, and the other licking his lips, probably trying to initiate something inappropriate. 

It’s at this time that Leo’s memories begin to dim of that night.

 

-

 

“It’s  _ nice to meet you.”  _ the boy says through obvious gritted teeth. Leo finds himself really not giving a shit about anything other than the pounding in his own head. 

“Yeah.” he forces. “You too.” 

As it turns out, that boy, the one who had nearly knocked Leo down and then yelled at him about it, then who had taken his job way too seriously and paled beneath Leo’s glare, was his coworker. He knows that he’s heard his name before, on the first day he saw him. Kamui had said it, he thinks, but he can’t bother to remember it, and so he peers down at the ID badge pinned to the other boy’s chest. 

Takumi. Okay. 

“Um.” the third cashier speaks up, and Takumi turns to him, his glare quelling itself. Leo stares still at the ID badge, concentrating through his wild headache. “Do you guys know each other?”

“No!” they both say, at the same time. Leo regrets the sudden outburst, and tries to inconspicuously rub at his left temple. 

“O-oh! Ahaha, ha, okay then. It just seemed like you did. ‘Cause I dunno, I feel like I can sense, like,  _ bloodlust,  _ or something.” the boy grins, and Leo finds the patience within himself to read his ID card, too.

Hinata. Leo mentally reminds himself to remember the name Hinata, and to associate it with the x-shaped scar on the boy’s face. 

“No, we don’t.” Takumi continues. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” he says, before without so much as another look at Leo, turns to his register, his ponytail nearly slapping his face in the process. 

Hinata stands still for a moment, before puffing out his cheeks and laughing under his breath. “ _ Oh- _ kay.” 

And then Leo is left to just stand there. He shuts his eyes tightly, warding away the miners chipping away at his skull, before focusing on the register that’s supposedly his. 

It never once during this time occurs to him that he has yet to receive training on how to run a register. It had been agreed in his application that a coworker would teach him how, but at the moment, with the ache of a thousand plagues behind his eyes, he can’t seem to remember that small detail.

Luckily, he’s sick all over a potted plant before he meets even one customer.

“What the  _ hell?”  _ Takumi shrieks, and it’s within the expanse of hearing those words that Leo begins to wonder at the validity of his own life. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the wait, I've been, uh... *spins wheel* ... crafting artificial human organs.


	4. wherein happiness is currency

There’s a ribbon tied to the slats of the heater vent in his room, and out of focus, Leo watches as it slowly sways in the air. He holds a cold pack to his head with his arm, eyes heavy and stinging, but not quite so powerful that he’s drifting off to sleep. 

To the left, next to him on the mattress, his phone buzzes. Using his free hand he searches the sheets, smacking them in an attempt to locate the device, and when he finally gets it, it buzzes again. Groaning inwardly, he shuts one eye against the onslaught of the bright screen. 

_ My sister walked in on me making a mustache with my hair [6:24 AM] _

For just a moment, Leo’s headache calms itself. His lips part in a kind of nonplussed admission, and he blinks three times at the bright screen. What does he say to that? There’s a disconnected thought about why the painkillers he had taken aren’t kicking in yet, and then he’s back to questioning the message in his hand. Is he supposed to question it? He’s not sure. Does he… not react? Say okay? In the end, he just squints at his phone for a while, and sends a stealthy,

_ ‘You have long hair?’  _

The heating shuts off, and the apartment is left in an aching silence that both aids and hurts his head. That ribbon tied to the heater falls toward gravity, and his phone vibrates again. 

_ Yeah. It cheers me up to play with it i guess. [5:24] _

A door closes somewhere else in the apartment. Either Odin or Niles are up, and though there’s a new text message on his screen, Leo glares at the ceiling in disdain. He wishes that it could still be yesterday, and that he didn’t have to go to work. 

The fact that he’s been up since three in the morning nursing his headache does nothing to help this dilemma. He’s not entirely sure why, but whenever he gets some kind of ailment, it lasts about ten times as long as it should. For example, should he catch a simple cold, it’ll last for an entire month. When he was smaller his siblings had expressed worry, saying he was sickly, but he had brushed them off, not quite comfortable with the attention. 

Anyway, he doesn’t have the heart to tell them that the issue has only gotten worse since he’s reached adulthood. He looks back at his phone. 

_ ‘Why are you up so early?’  _

Leo wonders about getting out of bed early, thinking that some movement might help him a little, but when he tries to sit up his head feels like a balloon, and the room loses a lot of its color. 

Never mind. His head lands back on the pillow with a dull  _ pof,  _ and he reminds himself that at least he has two hours before he needs to actually start getting ready. 

The phone buzzes. He hadn’t realized he had dropped it atop his stomach during the dizzy spell. 

_ I stayed up helping my sister study. [5:25]  _

What is written on the phone doesn’t really register to Leo. He’s stuck in his head thinking about just how much he does  _ not  _ want to go to work today, despite it still being his first week. Though, he replies anyway. It’s like his hands move on their own out of obligation. Kind of like having to do a daily task when you’re sick, even though you don’t feel like it. It’s that kind of obligation. Had it been a better day, he might be more engaged in the conversation. 

_ ‘Same sister?’ _

The response is almost immediate. 

_ No, this sister is younger than me. [5:25] _

Elise pops into Leo’s head. Despite himself, the side of his mouth quirks into something amused. Elise couldn’t care less about studying, yet she’s one of the smartest people he knows. 

_ ‘Any more sisters you’d like to mention?’  _

In the quiet of the apartment, the sound of the shower next to his bedroom turning on is deafening. This leads Leo to confirm that it’s Niles rather than Odin, as Odin only showers every other day, and he had done so yesterday. Niles is one of those people who cares about smelling nice. Odin, on the other hand, cares more about staying up until dawn to finish building his paper mache swords.  _ I wonder if we’ll have a party once Odin gets hired somewhere?  _

The phone buzzes once more. 

_ I have three sisters, and a brother. [5:26] _

Leo wonders if this person is the oldest, or the youngest, or in the middle, like himself. He also wonders about the statistics of having the same lofty amount of siblings as someone whose phone number he acquired by chance at a book signing.

_ ‘That’s funny. I have two brothers and two sisters.’ _

He can hear Niles humming something in the shower. Every now and then Leo thinks he recognizes the tune, but then in the next moment it will morph into something else. He squints. Niles has a nice voice, but for some reason, it’s grating on him at the moment. Damn headache. 

His brain sends signals to his fingers before he can even notice. 

_ ‘Although, the younger brother isn’t really my brother.’  _

A few moments pass, and then, 

_ The middle sister isn’t my real sister, either. [5:27] _

_ She’s the one who steals my phone. [5:27] _

-

 

“But that one’s the one I usually use, ‘cause you have to like,  _ punch  _ it to get it to open all the way. And I’m gonna be honest, you don’t look like the kind of guy who likes punching stuff.”

Leo stares at the aforementioned cash register in slight disdain. It’s got a bit of a dent where it opens, and it looks like its paint is chipping, which is weird, because he’s not even sure that it  _ has  _ paint. 

“Right.” he says, because he can’t think of what else to respond with. Hinata grins and gives him a thumbs-up. 

“But that’s it, really. It’s easy. I’ll take the punchy one, and you and Takumi handle whatever else. I mean, we only have four.”

“Then why don’t you use the one that you don’t have to punch?” Leo starts to say, before someone calls Hinata away in the middle of it, and he’s left alone behind the counter with Takumi, who has been eerily quiet this entire time. 

“He likes punching stuff.” Takumi mutters after an awkward few minutes. 

“Ah.”

 

-

 

One of the pieces of lettuce in his salad is browning at the edges. Leo doesn’t really know if that’s a big deal or not, he’s not exactly a salad expert. Regardless, he eats around it. 

“You’re so  _ cute.”  _

Leo looks up, affronted. He squints at his sister in the cheerful lighting of the restaurant. Camilla smiles brighter and taps on her glass with a manicured nail. 

“What did I do?” he asks, kind of hesitant, but he knows that if he ignores her he’ll feel her stare digging into him like a knife. As if to distract himself, he spears one of the fully green pieces of lettuce and puts it in his mouth, raising one eyebrow.

“You still play with your food. You know, you really ought to show people how cute you are. It’s charming.” 

“I’m not-” he starts, before realizing he’s talking too loudly. He calms himself, taking a deep breath through his nose and shutting his eyes. This is the kind of restaurant that serves tea and dainty little cakes. He doesn’t want to yell and get banned. “I’m not  _ playing with my food.”  _ he hisses, and Camilla’s eyes shut at the sheer force of her smile. 

“Alright, little brother.”

Leo looks down toward the salad, sighing. That brown piece stares back up at him innocently. He wonders why Camilla never reacts when he gets mad. Xander will raise his eyebrows and look the other way, and Elise will either giggle a little bit or quiet herself, depending on the severity, but Camilla always skates past it as though she’s immune. Sometimes she pats his head or something, but she hasn’t done that for a while now. He finds himself wondering what makes her the person that she is, simply because she’s so enigmatic. 

“Really…” Camilla continues, and Leo brings himself back into the real world. “You always look so upset. I just want you to be happy.” 

He looks up at her again, this time contemplating. She takes a sip out of her teacup, and her eyes narrow in a way that’s nothing but motherly. 

“Can you show me a smile?”

For the longest time, he just looks at her. Eventually she starts taking sips of her drink again, having already finished her food. Leo stabs his salad rhythmically, and he’s not sure why he does so but he does. Maybe it relaxes him. Finally, he stretches his face into an uncomfortable smile. Camilla scoffs. 

“A  _ real  _ one.” she says, waving her hand. “You look like you’re posing for a picture you’d rather not be in.”

In his pocket, Leo’s phone vibrates. He ignores it, because he knows that if he takes it out, Camilla will bombard him with questions. 

His face relaxes once more. “I’m not sure what you mean.” he says. 

Camilla sets her cup down with a sharp clink. She rests her elbow on the table, and puts her chin atop her palm. For a while, she just looks thoughtful, before out of the blue she asks, “How’s work?” 

“I threw up on a ficus.” Leo blurts. This actually gets her to lose her composure, if only for a split second. Her eyes widen and she blinks twice, before she’s back to normal.

“Oh, dear. How did… that happen?” 

It smells like chocolate. They must be baking a new cake. 

“Niles and Odin decided to celebrate my being hired. I drank too much and was sick the next day.” 

Luckily, he’s hardly sick anymore. He’s only really sick if he thinks about being sick, in the very back of his head. He’ll think, oh yes, I’m supposed to have a headache, and then feel a sharp pang. It’s weird, really. His body and his mind are both really weird. 

At this, Camilla turns serious. “Did Niles make you drink too much again?” 

Thinking back, Leo shakes his head. “No, actually. He was rather well-behaved, now that you mention it. I must have lost track of myself, that’s all.” 

“Hmm…” Camilla hums. They’re lulled into another moment of silence, in which Leo spears some more green lettuce. 

“If those two give you any trouble, let me know right away.” Camilla says. Her eyes move to the ceiling. “I’ll put them in their place. I know how they can be, little brother.”

“A-ha.” Leo snorts. “I appreciate it. They are rather terrified of you… but, they mean well. They really do.” 

He takes another bite, and idly looks back to Camilla, only to see her smiling in an oozingly sweet manner. The smile radiates such a warm feeling that he pauses in his chewing, holding his fork mid-air and spitting out an articulate, “What?”

Camilla shakes her head, her long hair flouncing this way and that. “Nothing. You just smiled for real, that’s all.”

 

-

 

_ My niece keeps mixing things from the spice cabinet and making me drink it help [7:34 PM] _

_ Also her little brother is eating my hair [7:34 PM]  _

_ Oh my god she put a raw egg in that one [7:36 PM] _

_ I don’t care how passionate you are about protein that’s criminal [7:36 PM] _

_ What did I do to deserve this? [7:38 PM] _

Leo concludes that throughout his dinner with Camilla, he had failed to notice that his phone had vibrated more than once. He stares at the messages with a small and crookedly confused smile splitting his face, before typing out a reply.

_ ‘Maybe you did something terrible in a past life.’  _

“Three of a kind. Leo, what are you smiling about?” 

When he looks up, Leo first notices the cards placed on the table. Indeed, three of a kind, though he had never had a chance to win from the beginning. He drops his own cards onto the table haphazardly, and Niles starts to shuffle the deck. 

“Hm. It obviously wasn’t your cards. Is it the phone again?” 

When Niles is at home relaxing, he looks quite a bit different than he does when he’s in public. In contemplation, Leo stares at his roommate. While he’s quite daring with his fashion outdoors, he usually wears simple pajamas when he’s at home. He doesn’t bother to put his glass eye in, either. 

At first the eyepatch had been unsettling, but now, it’s like it’s not even there. 

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Niles says, tilting his head to the side. “Have you got a crush on this mystery person?”

At once, Leo scoffs. “Gods, no.” 

“Mmmmm?”

“No, Niles.” 

“Ah, always so cold… I wonder if you’ve got a romantic bone in your body.” 

The side of Leo’s mouth twitches into a semi-frown. “I wonder if there’s a single part of you that isn’t predatory.”

He supposes that to any other, this moment between him and his roommate might be tense. However, after a few short seconds, Niles simply bursts out laughing. “Touche.” he says, and Leo smirks. 

“Another round?”

Noises from outside filter into the apartment. They’re muffled, but they make their way in, anyhow. Leo wonders if Odin left a window open again. Maybe that’s why it’s so chilly. He’ll have to ask him when he gets home. 

-

 

“Congratulations.” says Oboro. She’s smiling brightly, which makes Leo feel a bit guilty, since he had forgotten her name before glancing at her ‘uniform’. He only ever sees her stocking shelves occasionally, to be fair. “You made it through your second week of work without barfing!” 

In the distance, he recognizes a  _ Ha!  _ from Takumi. He fights to keep his amiable smile. “Yes, I’m still horribly sorry about that…”

“Oh, no worries.” Oboro waves her free hand. She hands him half of her pile of children’s books, and he sets about shelving them in alphabetical order. “Takumi and Hinata have done worse things. I’ll tell you about Takumi when he’s-”

“Don’t you dare, Oboro.”

“-not within listening distance. But there was this one time when Hinata accidentally tripped a customer and they ended up spraining their ankle. He didn’t get in any trouble, though, since he and I are personal friends of Takumi’s.”

Leo pauses. He stands on his toes, ignoring the harsh glint of early morning sun from the windows. About three aisles away, he can see the obnoxious spike of Takumi’s ponytail peeking out from above the shelves. 

“He’s used to being teased.” Oboro supplies. “Don’t worry about it.” 

After a hesitant falter, Leo nods. “What does it matter if he’s Takumi’s friend?”

Oboro blinks, and glances toward Leo, before returning to her task and talking all the while. “You didn’t know? Takumi’s family owns this store.” 

_ “What?”  _

Leo thinks he hears another laugh from Takumi, but this time it’s quiet enough that he wonders if he had imagined it. Oboro laughs too, but hers is a friendly sort of laugh. When Takumi laughs, it always seems to sound like he’s making fun of you. 

“They do. His brother built it with his bare hands, so they say.”

“That’s not possible.” Leo says. He shoves a book into the B section, before realizing that its title starts with a D. “This is a city street. You can’t just build something out of nothing. There are all sorts of contracting processes…” 

“I guess it’s just word of mouth.” Oboro admits. “But knowing that guy, I wouldn’t doubt he managed it somehow.”

Leo almost finds it strange that Takumi doesn’t comment on this. In the end, though, he really couldn’t care less. It’s nothing but meaningless conversation. Get along with your coworkers, and all that. 

… Except Takumi. Takumi can fuck off. 

“Anyway,” Oboro continues. “It’s kind of a mystery how  _ you’re  _ still here.”

Leo shoves another book in the wrong shelf, before correcting himself. “Pardon?”

“I mean, no one blames you for throwing up-”

“I do!” Takumi chirps from the other aisle. Oboro ignores him. 

“-but that’s not exactly a great first impression. You’d think there’d be some repercussions, right? Like I said, no one blames you. When you’re sick, you’re sick. And, you’re a lot easier to deal with than some of our other employees. But, it’s just a mystery, you know?”

This information hits Leo like a speeding bus. He stares at the shelf labelled G, and blinks. It’s his first job, so he hadn’t really thought about what happens when you… puke… at work. But, now that he thinks about it, especially on his first day, something like that is  _ definitely  _ grounds for being fired. The G shelf stares back at him, and Oboro seems to trip over herself. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.” she tries, and Leo just shakes his head. “I tend to talk too much about other people, it’s a really bad habit of mine…”

“No, it’s alright.” he amends. He grabs another half of Oboro’s pile of books. “That  _ is  _ strange. I hadn’t even thought about it.” 

 

-

 

“I’m telling you, it’s got to be gray.” 

_ “And I’m telling you,”  _ Takumi barks again. “It has to be the primary colors. What kind of kid sees the color gray and thinks,  _ ooh, fun!”  _

Leo frowns angrily at the vacant corner of the store. 

“Actually no, gray isn’t even a color!” Takumi continues. 

Under some cruel order of every god there may or may not be, they had both been put in charge of setting up a basic idea for a children’s reading area. Leo is feeling rather bitter, as though the universe had seen it fit to throw him into a boiling vat of hell liquid, or something. That’s what it feels like to be around Takumi, he tells himself. Hell liquid. 

“We’re doing bright and colorful. That’s final.”

“Have you  _ seen  _ the rest of the store?” Leo argues back. “If we make it too colorful, it’ll wash out how subtle the rest of this place is. We’ve got to keep it decent. The colorful children’s books will be enough to attract them,  _ without  _ blinding them with bright yellow and red furniture.” 

To this, Takumi groans. “Kids don’t  _ care  _ about color coordination.”

“No, but adults do, and they’re customers too, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“What kind of asshole is gonna care about the colors in a kids’ area?!”

“You’d be surprised.” Leo says grimly. 

Right then, Oboro strolls past with a cart full of books. She’s looking straight ahead, as though she hadn’t even noticed the two of them arguing. 

“Oboro!” Takumi calls, but she just keeps walking. It’s then that Leo notices she has her earbuds in. He shakes his head.

“She can’t hear you.” 

_ “Uuugh.”  _

Takumi starts following her. Leo looks back toward the corner, frowning still. He waits for a while, thinking how nice the area would look in gray. The rest of the store has mostly black furniture, and so a bit of gray would make it feel less dark, while simultaneously following the monochrome theme… when he was a child, he’d have thought the area nice. 

“She told us to decide on our own.” Takumi says upon returning. 

Leo snorts. “That’s helpful.” 

“That’s what I said. Then she gave me these books to go shelve. I hate her.”

“I thought you were friends?”

“We are. Still hate her.”

Takumi then shoves the stack of books into Leo’s hands. He glares, left eye twitching just a bit. “You put them away. I gotta go do something.” then, he’s off, ponytail swaying as he marches back into the warehouse area of the store. Leo stares after him, nonplussed. He opens his mouth to say something snarky like,  _ what the hell,  _ or,  _ alright, I’ll write down that we decided on gray,  _ but in the end, he just glares and glares. He glares even after Takumi is gone, and he glares longer still as he shoves the books onto their proper shelves.

He had had rather powerful suspicions before, but now, after spending two weeks with him, Leo had cemented one idea in his head. Takumi is an unbearable asshole. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, sorry about the wait. My attention is divided between three (arguably four) ongoing fics and I update them in the order of which was updated the longest ago... Plus the occasional oneshot, and also two more multichapter fics which I'm writing completely ahead of time before posting them. Also, they're from all different fandoms, so I have to, like, get in character for each one. anYWAY enough whining from me.   
> Personally, I agree with Takumi, but Leo does have a point. Also Camilla is really fun to write wtheck

**Author's Note:**

> Pro Tip: Ignore typos I have jelly fingers.


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